The enemy’s voice is always speaking, droning on. And if we don’t seek the voice of the Father we can never be free.

Towards the end of my dad’s life the cancer affected the speech center of his brain. He was there mentally, it was clear that he knew where he was and what He was saying…. it just didn’t make sense to anyone else. It would come out in a stream of random words that formed no seemingly coherent thought. We discovered that if he said one word at a time, very slowly the correct word (s) would come out. This only worked for short sentences because he would get frustrated and give up…. towards the very end even this wasn’t very reliable.

His mind was fading fast and all I could do was smile and nod like I knew what he was talking about…. I just wanted to be with him. When I would tell him I didn’t understand him or ask him to repeat something I would see a very pained look that I never wish on anyone to see in their dad’s face; one of fear and helplessness and very real humanity… so I nodded and smiled.

One afternoon he was talking his nonsense and he stopped. I looked over to him to see why he stopped and he looked at me, pointed to his face and slowly, forcefully said 7 words that still echo in my mind to this day.

He said, “Justin, It, All, Comes, Back, To, You.”

I am not sure what he meant by those words but in that moment my throat seized up….. I’ll never forget the focus, the urgency in his eyes when he said it……

Was he fooled by the enemy into thinking that God was punishing him for all his mistakes?….. Was he trying to pass on his final declaration to me about doing good?…… I will never know, and I have to learn to be ok with that. Some stories we don’t know the outcome this side of heaven and that truth needs to be accepted.

I never knew for sure if my dad accepted Christ before the end. I watched God reach out to my dad throughout that year of sickness and pain and I never knew, cause that’s how my dad was…..

These words echo in my mind because He could have meant two very different things depending on who’s voice he was listening to; God or satan.

….i think about this and I hope and pray that he was speaking life to me and not death on himself. Sometimes we have to be okay not knowing. We just have to trust in the not knowing……knowing that God is good.

Written by: Justin Ludwig